The Broken Barn Flower Farm is an integral part of Broken Barn Industries' world class joy delivery system. Join us on a seasonal journey of hard work, pain, and sweaty misery. All beauty, all the time on a real life flower farm. These are dispatches from Zone 5.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

This Better Be GOOD- or Else!

So I'm touring around and stop to check on my cardinal flowers. They bloom very late in the season which, if you are a perennial gardener, you know is very valuable- so many of them finish so early in the season- poppies, irises, lupine, peony, bleeding heart, and so on. Here is what the cardinal flower will look like.

Stunning, yes? It's even more so in person. I have yet to see a photo that truly does it justice. It's also special to me because I loved seeing them bloom in the Adirondacks in late summer when I was a kid, so it's a good memory type plant for me, a lovely native. Now look closely at that top pic. I think if you click on it, it'll get bigger. The plants on the left and right are cardinal flowers. So just WHAT is that fucker in the center hogging up their space and water? (Cardinal flowers grow at the edges of lakes and streams in full sun. They like a lot of water so I put them in this particular spot because it gets a ton of run-off from the porch roof.) I will tell you what: I don't KNOW what the fucker in the middle is. Since I don't and it looks like it's about to bloom, I'll leave it be. For a minute. If it's some sorry ass weed it's getting the old heave-ho.

Today's lesson: That "weed" might be something incredibly badass. If you're not sure, leave it be till it blooms. If it turns out to be crap, yank it, curse it and don't compost it.

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What was the Broken Barn?

The Broken Barn was part of a farm that has stood on a quiet rural corner of upstate New York since 1860. The barn was big. In the summer of 2010, the Broken Barn was carefully removed by a team of experts. It will be reconstructed far from here as a house. All of the materials in the barn, including the nails, were reclaimed and recycled. Most will be included in the new structure. We got to keep 150 years of manure and decomposing hay. This will soon be incorporated into the Broken Barn Flower Farm.